In their reveal of the new circuit Ubisoft revealed the new yearly schedule. One standout is the 5 months of Off-season between the 2 Stages. This is excessive. From what we currently know, it leaves just under half the year as dead space where nothing happens. There’s a number of justifications given for this excess Off-season but none of them hold water, especially when this is the circuit for the professional players, people paid to play this game for a living.
Too little competition and a fast paced environment
Too little competition is a problem because teams get rusty. Professional Siege is like anything else, do it too little and you’re not as good. Look at nvK’s return from Valorant, he’s never been the same since. The fact is you can’t just spend months and months away from the game and expect to be at the same level. 5 Months is a lot of time for any practice, but especially in hyper fast esports. Many experts consider 6 months the equivalent of 2 years in regular sports and careers lasting more than 5 years are considered long. It’s why players like Canadian, Skys, Nesk, Elemzje, and all the other Year 1 players still around are so impressive, they’re in the esports version of 40-50 and still killing it!
With that framing, no, why would I want to let a ‘year’ drift by without anything happening? Why waste the prime of a player like that? Olofmeister was the best player in the world in 2015, but he only dominated Counter Strike for 6 months before his form fell off. If he were playing the new Siege circuit he might miss half of that prime to an Off-Season. Personally, I don’t want to miss that kind of spectacle.
Beyond that, so much time off leads to extremely high amounts of ring rust, especially going into the Six Invitational. That means the teams that have been the best across the year may fall short because they actually took time off while other teams grinded. It also lowers the overall level of play in the tournament. When we’re talking about the premiere event in Siege’s calendar, subpar play is the last thing I want. Rusty teams make for messy gameplay, and that’s no fun to watch. It also messes with the tournament results.
IEM Rio was a mess of a Major in CSGO. Beyond the marketing as “the biggest event ever” it also cited the most upsets in Major history and one of the worst playoff brackets ever. Wouldn’t you know it, but the Major was the first event out of CSGO’s player break. Is it any surprise that top teams like FaZe Clan looked mortal and NaVi collapsed?
Point is, having your player breaks right before the biggest events leads to disaster. In that sense I not only take issue with Siege’s new Off-Season, but its placement as well. But comparing Siege’s Off-Season to other esports shows that it really is odd, and leaves a lot to be desired.
Compared to other player breaks
The CSGO circuit includes 2 player breaks, each 1 month long. This only affects the T1 scene, so T2/T3 teams are still able to compete and improve in smaller tournaments. But nothing of importance is held during this time so it creates a top-down incentive to use that particular period of time to unwind.
2 months is a good amount of time, as it gives both time to unwind and relax as well as giving teams the chance to update their playbook or make roster changes. The way player breaks are implemented in CSGO seems to strike a good balance for the scene, the only complaints regarding player breaks are their timing, not the breaks themself. But CSGO is an open circuit and Siege is much more in line with a franchised league. So let’s look at a franchised league.
The Western LoL circuit is pretty well defined at this point in time. It’s actually very similar to Siege’s new circuit as a matter of fact. The LCS/LEC features 2 regular splits, Spring and Summer, that lead into MSI and Worlds, the two only international events in the calendar. Very similar. Each split lasts 3 months and the Mid-Season Invitational takes about a month from start to finish. Worlds is the crown jewel of the LoL circuit and lasts 2 months from play-ins to grand finals. You’ll notice that this gives around 3 months of Off-Season to Western teams. It’s more time than CSGO’s 2 months, but much less than Siege’s 5.
When compared to other esports it’s pretty clear to see that Siege builds too much dead space into its calendar. I don’t think people understand just how long 5 months is. The average 9-5 gives you 2 weeks of vacation a year, the average esports player gets 4x that to relax and “rebuild.”
Justifying 5 months
There have been a few justifications given for this excessive Off-Season:
Teams need time to rebuild and improve
Unannounced events will fill that dead space
For the first reason I understand the teams’ desire for clear time for improvement and roster changes. When you have to prep for next week’s match you don’t have as much time to rebuild your Villa strats. The idea is that by having so much time to work with, players get to take a step back from the competition and relax for a little and also have the space to improve as a team.
Now, even though I understand, I don’t buy teams needing 5 months for improvement and time off. As already mentioned, esports is fast paced. Roster changes and re-upping strats only needs 1-3 months unless you’re completely rebuilding. But in that case, you should have to come into your matches half baked. Of course, whose to say those 1-3 months will even be fully dedicated to improving?
Across all esports players are notoriously lazy. You hear stories of CSGO’s greatest players barely touching the game, never watching vods, and any number of other ‘accomplishments,’ I’m not so naive to believe Siege players are any different. Players will be and are lazy. Some have missed out on previous opportunities because they didn’t put in the work despite clearly having the talent. It’s why MrB being a drill sergant and making RealityTV work hard is notable. If everyone did it, it wouldn’t be noticed.
Given that, I doubt this 5 month Off-Season is going to be used to its full potential as a way for teams to improve and make roster changes. It’s more likely to play out as an excuse for certain players and teams to have long-ass vacations. So why not fill some of that time with more competition?
A reminder that there are barely any Tournament Organizers involving themselves in Siege. It’s only homegrown passion projects like SCS and blood money trying to sportswash like Gamers8. Dreamhack, OGA Pit, and ESL are all names that once participated in the Siege ecosystem but no longer do. With no 3rd party TOs present to fill out the Off-Season, it ends up being a 5 months of radio silence, watching CSGO and Valorant to fill a very large gap.
As far as events go, all I’ve heard are rumors. You can’t live off rumors and if they end up being untrue we’ll have wasted our time speculating. It’s true that Ubisoft said they would release more information at the Six Invitational but I won’t make assumptions of what that entails. That said, even if Minors were to be introduced to the Off-Season, they would be counter intuitive to an “Off-Season” unless only for T2. Even if T1 could play, I question how seriously teams would take a tournament held during supposed vacation time. Look at the discussion around the NAL teams in SCS. Parabellum was trolling with shotguns and that meant the matches they lost ‘didn’t prove anything.’ So forgive me when I’m skeptical about teams trying in tournaments they know don’t matter in a time that’s interpreted as time off.